THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Hamilton to Ferrari! Who saw that coming?

Not any more. Not after the Andretti fiasco yesterday. Refusing to let in a viable, well-funded new team, with rich motorsport heritage and the backing of General Motors, and who had already been approved at a technical level by the FIA, for no other reason than brazen financial greed. That was the straw that broke the camel's back after 30 years of F1 being a big part of my life.

Bernie Ecclestone had many, many faults - but he knew how to keep the balance between F1 being a sport and a business. Liberty Media have systematically raped F1 as a sport, solely for their own financial gain. F1 is now a closed-shop sports entertainment franchise with barely any more credibility than WWE. Liberty can fuck off and die.

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"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

I think that its a mistake but actually when you drill into the detail of it its more to do with Cadillac not being able to produce an engine until 2028. It leaves the prospect of cadillac andretti being a customer team via compulsory supply which doesnt make a lot of sense commercially or from an IP perspective.

So what? The majority of teams in F1 are customer teams. McLaren is a customer team and is doing very well of late.

Fuck me, Haas's entire model is built on buying in literally everything they're allowed to from Ferrari. They've been doing it for eight years and counting. How come that's OK for an existing team, but not a new one?

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"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

But that aside I think Lulus move might indicate a good few things

1) The 2024 Merc is already known to be a dog
2) The reason that Mclaren moved to secure Lando at a bit of a weird time
3) The reason that Ferrari moved to secure Leclerc at a bit of a weird time
4) That Merc have been left in a difficult position with regards their 2025 driver line up. My money would be on Albon for the seat
5) Where will Sainz go? Probably Sauber/Audi with his fathers historic links.

Biggest F1 news in years

Yes but neither Haas or or Mclaren are OEM engine teams. Cadillac are. Image Renault are forced to supply Andretti with engines with GM ultimately being a direct rival 2 seasons later with all the IP issues around that.

Renault (Alpine) were one of the only teams that came out in support of Andretti joining, so it's obviously not of concern to them.

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"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

Maybe, maybe not. As I said, i think it would add far more benefits than negatives for them to have been allowed to complete but with the tie up with GM being the biggest factor of stability, I can totally see the conflict of forcing an engine supplier to supply them an engine, which I think would in fact be Renault. I dont know how much Renault would have invested in the engine design over this iteration of the formula but it would be a tough ask to supply the relevant data to an OEM rival for buttons.

Audi have had to wait until they can run their own engine, so why should Andretti not?

The other day Will Buxton teased some enormous news that may come to light later this week, didn't expect it to be this though.

I knew Lewis had always flirted with the idea of Ferrari (I mean no matter how crap Ferrari may be in that moment, every driver wants to wear the iconic red at least once in their career), but I honestly didn't think it would ever happen.

Let's see if he knows something the rest of us don't about the Ferrari car and new regulations. After all, he got his Mercedes move spot on when many questioned it back then.

How are Renault being forced? They've already said they're in favour of Andretti and they aren't supplying engines to anyone at the moment. I'm sure they'd be happy to get the revenue and the extra data. This 'compulsory supply' line is one of many examples of complete Liberty bullshit in that statement they released yesterday.

And nothing was stopping Audi coming in sooner than 2026. They chose that date to coincide with the new engine rules, which is understandable. Nobody told Audi they couldn't come in sooner.

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"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"